countries as well. and as you can imagine, there were a few enslaved people there at that time. and there was at least a thousand, more slaves in the west indies than virginia in 1812 and so it's not like berries have hands that are completely clean. this includes their own purposes helping enslaved people become free. they are at least true to their word. but the british took these runaway slaves and sold them to the west indies. ..

but british officials perceived to be in their interest. they might use it at the planters paid travel. also if slaves were out. the expectation was made clear that if there's a slave revolt in trinidad they were supposed to help suppress the. they were supposed to catch runaways are not receive them into their communities. so it's only in the 1830s the british will make a concerted effort, parliament passes law for the gradual emancipation through this conversation apprenticeship horrendously

cheap on the west indies. often enslave people get impatient with this and they will rise up and demand more immediate freedom. so it is a tangled process, but it is through it is around civil war. that's fairly easy to do with the political center is in london in the planter class has limited power by the team 30s in parliament. much less so than that. and he has studied so well when the planter passes far more in parliament and it was in 1830s. >> another question here. this is the last one. i'm just wondering, did the british can did her son and then to sierra leone? was that an option or too far ordered the freed slaves simply not want to go back? to africa. >> good question. i don't see evidence that the

proposed sierra leone for the war of 1812 refugees. sierra leone was pretty well understood and turned out to be a disaster. a very extensive disaster in the lives of the people sent their hand and cost of the british. the sierra leone company that organizes the bankrupt british government was left holding that. so they don't want to repeat that. so none of these former american slaves were in sierra leone, as far as i can tell. >> thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> booktv will be live on espn2 and booktv that work for the 64th annual national book awards in new york city this wednesday, november 20. tune in at 7:40 p.m. eastern for coverage of the entire awards ceremony. >> booktv will be live from the 64th annual national book awards on november 20th that he stands here. in anticipation of the live program, we are featuring the five finalists from our fiction. next, wendy lower, history professor at claremont mckenna college and historical consultant to the u.s. holocaust memorial and the young recounts the road is one that played the holocaust or her national book nominated title, "hitler's "hits furies: german women in the nazi killing fields." this talk from los angeles museum of the holocaust is one hour and 20 minutes.

>> thank you very much. i want to thank the los angeles museum of holocaust for this opportunity to speak today to you. can you hear me in the back? ashes be quite loudly? is this better? better? or too loud? okay. i also want to make sure i don't speak too quickly. i get very excited about my research and sometimes i start speaking too quickly. i hope you give me a signal and that both in terms of your ability to hear me i'm really happy to be here. dr. mellman and i actually have done some research together in the field and ukraine. we worked on a diary project together and there was a very, very special project, took many years to produce.

not as fun as this one, but a completely different perspective on the holocaust in the eyes of one jewish man, polish jewish man who found himself in the mouth drum on the mass murder. i just want to mention not dr. mellman contribution to that particular project with the weekend. i want to thank you for that. the story of warren was not something that i went to the archive looking for. i will be archived in the harmer soviet union and were craned in the dark 1992 with a completely different question. this is rather typical of historical research that you think you go after some bank and you go into an archive and find a file that looks kind of strange and curious and gets you wondering, why is this here --

i'm not sure. in the summer of 1992 come in the soviet union had collapsed. ukraine had become an independent country as in 1991. for me and i saw that as an opportunity as a budding scholar. i was a graduate student, to go into this territory and try to see what was there. i have been much in a material in the national archive in washington d.c., the things that the military had seeped out. confected nürnberg trial documents and captured german record. a lot of the material in washington was essentially the high command order, thanks captured in germany proper. documents for berlin, they're not trailer the agency is headquartered germany. what about all those regional offices where the german and baylor roots in lithuania,

estonia where these crimes occur? was going on out there in the field they get into those hard copies and start to understand and imagine the scope of the violence occurring in the open era setting outside of those killing centers like i should end now if your family are with the work of someone like timothy snyder, blood land, it's even more apparent to us now, more evident as close to half of it is of the holocaust perished outside of peace gaseous centers in the open air mass shootings, and together liquidations, during the deportations, and the use communities, okay? my first trip in the summer of 1992, i made my way to the sheik omar regional archive about

100 miles -- hundred miles and the reason why i went there was because i figured out from my advisors were, richard brightman wrote an excellent study of heinrich himmler, the head of the whole ss police apparatus that hitler had is headquarters in finance, about 50, 60 miles south. so i thought come here is an interesting place. it's in the heart of the settlement, which is historically important for jewish -- russian jewish history. catherine the great fit at this reservation to find jewish population of the empire to this particular area. it was at the heartland of jewish history, obviously a large population. concentrations are sometimes dirty% to 50% and not cause for once, of course from ikea. i thought you got hitler station

there. in these regional archives. i can start to understand what happened locally and whether or not hitler had a direct influence on that. in the early 90s, the big question of historiography with the decision-making question. when did the holocaust began? that was really what i was thinking when i went out there. i was naïve enough to think may be some of the most important material is not turned. and the horde quarters. and someone gets copied on a file at a lower level, it ends up in a regional archives. maybe i'm going to find some important high-level directives that are going to tell us more about how the holocaust started in hitler's direct influence on

not. when i got to the archives, i was astounded because there is a significant collection of material, things don't have looked at before. these were files that have bitterly footprints on the documents. the judges were burned. i could imagine when the red army came in at the end of 1943 to reoccupy that they were picking stuff up because there was warfare in the city and shoving these things and files in the archivist there was incredibly gracious because of this moment in time is establishing itself that hasn't instituted archival procedures and away. things that have been classified and bringing me tea and sandwiches. but the woman who was very generous of the materials to read german. i was looking at german files.

so i she doesn't know what's in here. there's no copy machine. i was just transcribing as fast as i could. among the files was this list of very innocuous personnel listed that showed young women, unmarried women if there is basically between the ages of 18 and 25. kindergarten teachers and welfare workers were sent charged with doing the kind of missionary work. germinates in this region because it's going to be in nazi thinking utopia, the living space is going to be the empire for germans only hitler referred to parts of ukraine.

he said this is going to be our riviera. non-germans are going to be eliminated starting with the jews in a completely transformed the landscape. they had gotten us there. they have other technocrats and specialists trying to 10% of utopia. they have a direct hand in creating these experimental colonies had so these women were brought in to participate in the colonization process. i figured this out in my research later on. initially i thought, where these young women here quite this is a war zone. this is where the war of destruction come as the germans called it, is taking place. it's titanic struggle, the military campaigns obviously.

i thought that ordinary german women were at home, taking care of the home front and having babies so that more soldiers could go into battle and more territory could be covered. here is an example of the kind of document. this is not just from the archive, but just to show you this personnel. this is from riga. for nicer to realize this phenomenon of these women going east could start to find documentation from other parts of eastern europe, local, regional records. you can see the telephone operators. one is situated in the office, kind of an executive secretary

in the front office and starting to figure out through this documentation that women document that i found is possibly the tip of the iceberg. when i went back to washington after the first trip i looked at what existed and thought okay, let me see if general holocaust history book and nazi germany books to what extent do women daycare and these books? had a presence in this place is? maybe someone else has dirty come across as and talked about it. when i couldn't find the women that i was looking now. of course i was fine a moment

that i was trying to find them on the map of eastern. i was finding a lot of photographs. can this be in research effort to all different heads the sources. this is the challenge of especially writing were emerging in these places in all different capacities. if a way for providers to the eastern territory, she is not going to be -- there is not going to be a paper trail. you find these women circulating . this is a classic image, a group shot. the commandant and the personnel bear. the city arms wrapped around him. and it says on the caption, an

unknown woman. another unknown woman below. the cover of the book is another unknown woman. i wanted to find out who those unknown women were and what were they doing. i also noticed that a lot of research had devoted to coming up with different perpetrator tapes that we had these kind of characterizations that emerge in the literature. the anti-semites. you have the ordinary man. you have the banal for your credit, the technocrat, the first soldier. these types have emerged and we were expanding our understanding of perpetration of the holocaust but these kinds of nuances in a similar kind of development was

not happening with the women's role. is there a female version? is very female version of an ordinary man? they even put into killing unit. what extent women might fit into those categories. he went back to the standard documentation we've been using. then i went back to the archives to some of the things they been using an investigative material. i started to notice that women were called to testify alive. they were very instrumental at the number of trial and started to realize, well, women are coming in to testify against

their mailboxes or even their spouses. they have a lot of information. they are providing a lot of historical, valuable information to prosecutors. information historians have pulled up in written history from. but not question, why does this woman knows so much? how come she is telling me every detail about procedures taken in the proper way documents are handed, how orders are conveyed to killing units, the mood in the office, what happened in terms of the distribution of property, who has access to safe classified material, identifying killers and often describing scenes from massacres. women's testimony has been underappreciated or taken for granted in many ways and we had massive document the testimony

how can they know so much? they must have been there. and if they were there, what did they do but they're not revealing in this testimony? we have to go back to these traditional sources and ask new questions. eventually, i was able to determine by this collect enough or if they came ménière's that there were approximately a rough estimate of future research may change this, but i could account for about half a million german women who have circulated in the eastern territories during the war and different capacities. the german red cross train 640,000 women during the nazi era. some 300,000 of them were in the eastern territories. the german army trained another half a million women in support

positions as flight recorders from a radio operators, wiretap yours, gamblers ss trained some 30,000 women and certified them. they had to maintain secrecy and these are special auxiliaries. gestapo headquarters and prisons. 2500 -- 2500 teachers were sent to one region alone in poland to participate in a german station after to set up kindergarten when the german refugees came in to teach them all about the nazi ideology and so forth. so of course over 200,000 women -- 240,000 women apply to be the wives of ss men and they were encouraged to go stay with them and because the

organization was a breeding organization, that leads to racial organization. we find many ss lies in these locations where their memoir so that they could be together and continue to promote the race and have more children. here's an image, i think it is quite illustrative of this phenomenon. the nurses being sworn in brooklyn. you can see the magnitude during the war. all of them in uniform. the other initiative rightists in the cover of a brochure. the east means you and this is trying to recruit women to be resettlement advisers so an ethnic german refugees were brought into these colonies, it was german women who were brought in to teach them the language, teach them germans on the german cooking, how to maintain a proper german household, all the kinds of

activities. now, while i was putting this picture together, what i came to realize there's a whole generation of german women because if you think about it, who are the individuals that are going to be going off in the nursing staff, and the secretary of. these are young women. young women who were fertile, who can reproduce for hitler and also young women who are single who are working in these offices and working on the nursing profession as teachers. i notice most of these women were on between 1920 and 1924 thereabout. and so now i not only have women on the eastern territory, but looks like a generational

phenomenon that was emerging. so i start to refer to them is the first world war i baby boomers. this fits into the general history of nazi germany that the leadership itself was young. those that committed these crimes were young within the german population. you had people like hitler and how mart in their 40s with enormous amounts of power and similarly women of marriage age in their 20s also wielded considerable power and the implications of that coming young people wielding the power, life-and-death ability to make life-and-death decisions over non-germans. in the summer of 2005 is that the u.s. holocaust memorial museum, still on this collect enough for, piecing this together. hadn't written up by results

yet. things are just starting to take shape. i at this point wasn't really sure how close the women got to the killing. i had evidence to show that many more were direct witnesses and many more were in the machinery as secretaries in particular. but i didn't have a lot of cases of killers in the last couple of years, when i started to turn the sub as my research focused on those perpetrators. this is a case that i came across in the archives in washington. i distinctly remember going through that microfilm and being really just hours on mashed by these documents. even 60 plus years after the event, was absolutely chilling. this case is one of the more

prominent ones in my book. the name of the individual is earned a peace treaty. the reason why we have this documentation on this killer is because she was arrested by the east german and she was interrogated by the east german police. her husband, the two of them stood trial together in 1962. when i looked to my finding, i thought this is an unbelievable case. a husband by standing trial together. the husband gets the guillotine. she gets a life sentence in that committed their crime on a farm in ukraine outside the camp system. already when i thoughti might not have got to look at this case. and then i get into the real and i see this confession here. that's her certificate. she's apprehended. that's her mug shot.

they're to the right right is the beginning of what is a confession. if you look on the right-hand corner, if you can make that out, you can see she's interrogated for full day with one lunch break and it starts in the morning and ends at 9:45. of course, this is the nice clean copy. someone got the information out of her and made this digest other further. in this document, she admits to killing six jewish boys on their farm and shooting them in the back of the neck. sukarnoputri was one of an entire generation of young german women who saw their

future in the eastern territory and they arrived there throughout different paths interject race. if they shared certain outlets, certain ambitions. verna petrie admitted in her compassion the reason why she killed those children was because she had been so indoctrinated in the 1920s and taught to hate jews. she also said in her compassion she wanted to prove herself to the man. many of these women when they went east were put in all kinds of situations that they went there with a certain idealism, certain convictions, certain ambitions and certain hopes and dreams. many of them of course didn't go voluntarily because they had compulsory wartime service. but they did share this nationalist outlook as to why they were there and why they had to defend her right. even one of my cases who probably has the most moral sensibilities and was most

conflicted about the violence she confronted, she still when i interviewed her in 2010, it was still clear to me that she didn't question that she had to be there to defend our homeland. even after she'd seen the most terrific or heard about and talk to her perpetrators in ukraine, she followed her orders and went to krasnodar, and deeper, further east into the were some and that she did not question because her sense of duty prevailed over a kind of sense of morality. in this regard, men were no different from women. so here, you can see the scale in terms of the number of women. but now you can see geographically what we're talking about in terms of the eastern territories, the stretch all the way through poland, and about to the north. ukraine, belarus.

this is where these women are stationed and mrs. of course where most of the violence and mass killing of the holocaust occurred. today, and the time remaining, i want to focus on a couple more case studies i've mentioned ernie petrie, one of the worst. i want to stress today it is my intention in writing this book is not to shock, to create. it is shock and information company serving information when you get to the cases of the killers in particular and see everyday experiences of women as the intersected with the holocaust. i want readers to gain a better sense to try to understand why the women went there to begin with, what they saw and why they responded in the different ways they did. the majority of them are

witnesses. then the next level of participation as accomplices in the machinery and professional capacities and then you had the best team in cases the perpetrators. the nurse i referred to was the one who went to north grok the lines and then from there she went to krasnodar. she is a very complex character and i think in many ways a very likable figure in the book. ..

>> she actually got her law degree in the 1930s which was very unusual. and she decided when she was called upon that during that time she was going to -- and she had developed into a kind of organization that attracted the middle to upper-class women in existing this way to show patriotism and lo and behold she was pulled out of that training because they immediately noticed that she was someone who is very cultured and they said that we

are going to set up the leadership and set up a special soldiers home in these areas in the occupied territories and this is a photograph from her personal album of one of these homes where the soldiers -- where they can find retreats and soldiers going to the front, and then returning, they can have these stopovers where they can get german cooking, interact with nice german women and relax and recreate and so forth, and so there were about 1200 german women like her who were sent to the east to manage the soldiers homes and she ended up being sent, as i mentioned, she had a population in that town it was reported of about 9000 jews. and for all of these women, this

moment of going east was transformative. they hadn't been out of town and they were villagers and this was to go to a new place, it was an enormous change let alone to go to a new place and see that they were in the so-called killing fields and the warfare and the genocide and even more she got there come a journalists said that come up this is the summer of 1941, why are you going to ease? don't you know that they are killing jews bear? and that information had already circulated and that had circulated and she thought oh, really? i can't believe that. and i have to go, have to follow my orders and i have to go anyway. but a the weeks after that she's on the train and the train stops and she's with her friend, another nurse.

these two men come into her compartment and they start talking to them and say that, telling the horrible story about how the one contestant that i just killed a jewish woman and it was -- it described how this kind of conflict emerged at the shooting site because this woman had a disabled sister and she was trying to save her sister and in any event, they killed both of these jewish women. but the the men started to tell her that that story happen. and she said oh, and she got off of the train at her location or she is going to be stationed and it is part of orientation and officers started explaining to her that she had recently shot

the jews and then she is going for a tour in town and she pointed out a man in a technical battalion unit and here is this river were 450 jewish men and women and children were shot a few months ago and this continues and she starts to learn more and more about this because it will mean oftentimes conversations with soldiers that personal really fast. these were men who had been around german women for a long time and they wanted to talk about this. so the women become kind of the recipients of these kinds of stories and she becomes so upset that she writes back that to her mother in november of 1941 and save these letters and share them with me. and she wrote to her mother and

said what poppa says is true. people would no more inhibitions exude a strange odor and i can pick up these people and many of them really do smell like blood. oh what an enormous slaughterhouse world is. so one more example. and then it's a very hard area to research. and this is near minsk. and then i do little bit more digging and had the opportunity

and this man -- it was during the time -- it was a boy and not a young man to the left. the regional governor where there is a very significant population is not too far from this. then they found refuge this because there was a lot of workshops that have been established and they are overseeing this workshop opportunity and these are his laborers and the entire family moved out and so does young man and his sister went to the workshop and were actually witnesses and they didn't return

and he was killed after a quick trial. and his name was lisa meyer and they became lovers. and here we have a picture and i don't know the other gentlemen in the picture, these are photos from personal albums that were collected during the postwar investigation of the crimes and this other photo was among those that were collected and she is identified here, standing with her shotgun and that is part of the story and better informed

than many of the officials in the station and she commissioned with them in town, obviously they had a villa. when they have their own kind of personal jewish laborers who could fulfill their every whim, be it jewelry or furs were all kinds of crafts and they demanded from the jewish laborers tori for his family name in an electric train set for his son and presented it to him at christmas and i was hoping that maybe you still have some of these objects because most of the population was killed and i thought maybe this is something that we have left

from the population that is gifted in terms of the skills as jewelers and electricians and so forth. and he did have a ring and the ring is now on display at the memorial museum. and this was part of the museum and this kind of history and this includes the locals that would go out on sundays, they would have sundays off, she and the other officials and secretaries went on their sleds and they often win in the snow into the forest and they would go on hunts and they wanted to hunt for rabbits on this particular occasion. they didn't find rabbits, but they did come across jewish

laborers who were shoveling along the road and the german officials with these women, they told the laborers to just run across the fields in the snow, which obviously is difficult to run quickly when you're running in the snow. and then they shot the jewish laborers like they were shooting rabbits. actually some of those -- they died and some of them actually made it to the forest and they actually made it to the forest and survived. they actually came back and testified against these individuals, including this individual and i think that's quite something that at that particular moment that they probably never would have imagined that any of these laborers would have survived and that some decades later they would confront them in the face

with her testimony. it was kind of a simple dictation and he was often told to write up orders and at one point in testimony was given that she authorized the there were 16 jews that appeared late for work and she was very important in terms of distributing the orders to the shooters and she met with the head of the jewish affairs who came in from the workshop and she was just like at the center of this because of a relationship and because she had this administrative role. she was able to issue the so-called gold cards, which were life-saving document, the only other way other than flight and suicide, was to secure a labor assignment. secretaries were also involve inflections when jewish victims

would march through town and they could pull individuals out of that line of and another secretary pulled a woman out of a deportation march and said she had not finished knitting a sweater, so she pulled her out. and these kinds of spontaneous acts of what seemed to be rescue, they were often motivated by greed and personal self-interest. and here is an image that i found in the archives in germany rather recently. these are very rare images and someone took an entire series of pictures from march of 1942 and these are the jews that are being marched into the center of town to be stripped of all their valuables and then brought to

another location and shot, and you can see the women on the right, you can see that the lead of the woman on the right and it reminded me of what i had testimony of role of women at these events, and here this particular image, also very interesting and disturbing. here's the commissioner with his gun, i don't know who this woman is a must, i've tried to match her up with the images of my hair and the individual's life and it's not clear. you have a police official then you can make others a young jewish boy coming out from a hiding place and being led in this direction and someone is taking the picture, so he is essentially surrounded. when i spoke to his son and looked in the testimony, one

incident kept coming up as a memorable event. but i wonder if this is actually in some way a depiction of that. the event was that a young jewish man who had been working in the stalls, looking after the horses, he had stolen something, food or something, done something minor. but for that he had to pay with his life. he was trying to escape and they shot him and they wanted to make a spectacle of this one the other jews not to do this and they pulled him out and they hung him up on a rod and he was left there and this child has a memory of seeing that. one of the officials actually had a german shepherd that he -- the german shepherd was also part of that scene. attacking the young jewish man.

[inaudible conversations] and so all right, i don't have time to go through all of these cases, there's a secretary in the ukraine who actually was doing more than being involved administratively, but at the actual shooting sites and she herself was notorious for killing jewish children in the ghetto and even multiple testimony from dozens of survivors from america and israel and canada and she has this nasty habit of killing these jewish children by

sticking her pistol -- she had her own pistol, she fashioned herself like a cowgirl and the wild beasts and would use the pistol in place that in the mouths of the children. and she would shoot them in the mouth. so these were some other really disturbing and horrible cases that started to emerge as i started to dig a little bit deeper and as i stated these are very unusual cases, but they have to be taken seriously and i don't see these women as freaks of nature or marginal as you pass, i really came towards us i wrote the book, i started to see the momentum of this regime and the way the women were socialized in what they were even doing in many of these women were also committing this crime with their children by their sides and brutalizing

youth and i see this kind of thing, this is headed into this kind of violence that was socially acceptable within this community. they were not punished during the nokia but they slipped back into society in their roles as youth workers and so forth and they were not habitual killers. they just change their behavior when the system collapsed supported that behavior and they also went back to the normal law abiding citizens. but many of them were not viewed by prosecutors as culpable or taken seriously. and men and women are capable of

voracious greed. women were at the culture of consumption and not because of gender, but because of in spite of it. they become convinced of an idea and of their own power to realize this idea. it is a kind of political engagement and activism high net in its history, it is a bias that has positive and negative connotation in this includes protecting the children who will safeguard the future. they blocked us from a direct confrontation with genocide and all of the realities from it.

systems that make this possible could not function without the broad situation of society. it is in a logical approach and puzzling omission. they show what can happen when women are mobilized for war and acquiesced in genocide. and thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible question] speaking with the german soldiers and this is at a time when soldiers confessed that it was well known in germany. >> we know that the regular german army is much more involved than was after the war. it has been completely debunked and well, he was part of this as well.

>> and there was a kind of martyred army and it was at a bloody trail behind that of it of involvement in mass shootings against the jews. and these guys, when the army came in with these killing units, the station themselves in places and they plan to these massive operations of the shooting operations, thousands of victims they might be the primary kind of shooting from

the actual execution squad. this kind of mass murder lasted for hours and it required a lot of personnel. and there was change over who was doing the shooting. and they talked about knowledge and a lot of the these soldiers were told that you are making history and they were advertising the personal snapshot camera and document this history that you are participating in. and that is part of what this campaign was all about. and you have a lot of evidence

and these images are being developed back in germany. i spoke to a woman in dock out who is one of my witnesses in her job was -- he was a young woman with a technician and she is sitting in developing photos of these atrocities on the eastern front. >> so that is basically somehow part of this. [inaudible question] >> we know that we are starting to find entries in diaries and the information is cemented in.

the german army is moving back and forth in the communications are cut off in that regard and so the knowledge was definitely circulating. [inaudible question] smack i want to say that it's amazing that you are here. >> using expression in society, obviously there are so many women that have never happened and there are many people, were they even prosecuted for what they did.

because what they did, they got into trouble -- [inaudible] >> most of the women that back into society postwar. and this helps us to see how inconspicuous they were. but the perpetrators -- i know about them because for instance the document that i showed you and she was acquitted acquitted in 1979 in 1982 despite all the evidence. there were a couple of reasons. they didn't interview the prosecutor the male perpetrators

can certainly reconstruct and they could put a man in one of those units and they are not following orders when they are doing this. they are doing this on their own, they are making any choice. against everything about the crime of murder.

so after a certain point, they have to prove that these killers, these anti-semitic people are really obsessive in their behavior. and so the paradox is that we have women saying look at what we are doing. and they have just collaborated this testimony that shows that these women are doing things that clear a base motive and they are still not committed.

>> i just had a question. [inaudible question] >> these women that collaborated [inaudible] >> in the ukraine and so forth. [inaudible question] >> okay, the literature had established that about 3500 women served as guards and we have documentation for that. especially for the book.

and the female perpetrators really focused upon these guards. and my book is arguing that the participation is much bigger than that. and we cannot think of the holocaust is confined to these species entirely comedies closed cam settings, although they are very important and very sensitive to this story. all the things that make genocide possible, men and women together. and in these different settings, on their homes, in their villas, on their picnics, in these remote regional outposts.

in this includes the settings. once these walls come down, and they were not so closed off for society. there is a lot of nitration from the outside and inside. ..

i wanted to show that this was something, you know, much more widespread and varied. [inaudible question] [inaudible question] >> well, you've got -- okay.

the reception here. russia, moscow, that part of the military application and the soldiers' homes were set up. this is geographic. [inaudible question]

>> absolutely. women were really -- this is one of their main activities featured in a book. i mean, i've got thousands in regular order. the secretaries. a r amassing a huge amount of fines either because they get access to the depots near the killing centers gorgeous from the actual mass killing sites. i mean, the nurse that i highlighted today at one point described to me how she was charged with going through the clothing that had been taken from the killing said. mended and repaired and sent

back to germany through the welfare association which was very much a women's kind of professional charitable organization. they're handling the movement of literally jewish close, cleaning them, mending them, and sending them back or synonym attacked ethnic german refugees. so part of the secretary who was in minsk, so many jews were deported to minsk from germany and killed. huge barns filled overflowing with jewish belongings. and they developed zero language in the office around it which i think is so much going on behind the scenes. they talk about judicial -- jewish sausage. organizing the food that is confiscated, coming into the

office. when you're in a modern day off to some people putting food out or maybe they don't have a celebration. even students talking about it. the gold that it's taken from the bodies. has access as a secretary. very, very important incident. she needed a gold filling. she went to the dentist. the the gold filling peter boss said terror, just common bring a certificate. you can have access. take the gold and is in the face. she was questioned about that after the war and insisted that she did not have that gold. it somehow got lost. she did not deny taking it. she said they got lost somewhere at the end of the war when the house was raided during the army occupation. the prosecutor did not tillage

opener mouth. maybe she added in the mouth. [inaudible question] [inaudible question] >> right. will we think of in terms of women and their being mediators are nurturing or maybe involved in the resistance activities. maybe even encouraging the has been not to be so violent. and, indeed, there were these. one case in particular in the

book. and she was involved in hiding a jewish girl, i believe. she was the wife of the forrester. she was brought before a special court and given the death sentence, killed. the judge at the end of the war said she should have known better. she came from an educated households she should have known better. so these stories of women who did defy the system from the they're also very hard to keep together. but they are there. you know, i think that is something that also has to be researched. i don't think they're as numerous as the picture regis portrayed today, but it is important also to document them. the young woman, the technician, the reason why know about her is

because she was actually higher in those photographs and hiding other things. a smart hiding place. and she was identified by the community for her civil courage. and so she was also a young german woman who for various reasons tried to do something in individual way, but most of these women, at the end she said, what could have done? what could i have done? me and this entire system. what could i have done. >> it so hard to document and

interpret what might be signs of feelings of shame or more some embarrassment. we talk to witnesses, men and women who was involved in this, even in the crime, first of all women are not traditionally telling stories. it's difficult for them to recount that level, the unpleasant part of the past, rather not talk about that. when it is discussed it is typical for me to interpret psychologically what they're feelings are about that. now someone says to me @booktv this happened in the documentation, stuck to speak about you and use the language of the time, and a semitic

language of the time as a tide not passed, i can conclude that that person, that ideology is so embedded in their identity in they're thinking is probably other were before. it is really, really hard. express that kind of -- i don't know if it is -- sometimes we makes shame with remorse very tricky. [inaudible question] >> yeah. well, i think they -- we have this ability to adapt. human adaptability. and if you are not on the receiving end of it, if you're

not a victim of the crime, if you actually have the power of committing it i think in terms of trauma and being able to kind of distance and adapt and move on, it's totally a lot easier. the psychoanalyst could probably tell me otherwise. can't answer that. it's out of my room. [inaudible question] >> i think the kind of basic cuban behavior becomes that of this history, is not

specifically german. those were very special circumstances. at that moment in germany. the jewish population. very historically specific. the motivation behind it. the way that men and women participate, the systems that create genocide, that is not uniquely german. hitler did not invent genocide. he invented auschwitz. [inaudible question] >> how many witnesses? >> yeah.

so, my research technique to many archives, first of all. the holocaust museum archives. , went to many archives in germany, national and regional, all kinds of local archives. i went back to the ukraine several times. poland. france. is a collection in paris. so, yes. i went to various repositories to collect accurate station, national archives in washington. quite a bit of field work. i started in into the project in germany to collect witness testimony. that often got a closer to people who are more involved. whenever i found documentation about some of these women i sent letters, make phone calls to try to find out if there were still alive. if i could talk to them. i ended up picking these. the material was rich enough to tell there stories. also, there were representatives

of these different types of a debt tied. but i talked to many more women. i just could not get enough. could get something on one chapter but not -- a la this book to be like 20th-century, the entire trajectory to fit that chapter and context from 1920's to the present. i interviewed of 40 witnesses. in the 13 women here, i had in direct contact with seven of them. many had not passed away. >> system i did. >> right.

[inaudible question] >> did not have a chance doctor. she died in 2003. no. ag couldn't -- i spoke to the prosecutor in the case. i talked to the defense attorney. i talked to a jewish witnesses who went to the child. very interesting, but she was completely conveying no remorse. she was actually -- the way she conducted herself in the courtroom. the prosecutor said to me, someone i would never want to encounter on a moonlit night. ice cold. and in the court room there is not a sympathetic defendant

whatsoever. she was indicted for aiding and abetting in the killing of nine dozen jews. yap. [inaudible question] >> absolutely. that is another issue. applying the old prussian criminal code, regular homicide, regular murder in the context of genocide. did not fit. it can be interpreted differently. today for instance it is being interpreted differently. it is up to the prosecutor and judge after the war she went to this west german investigative authority. she sent documentation about the people she spoke to, the soldiers who admitted that they

had taken part in these mass shootings. she dynasts then to the authorities after a war. she was a judge in germany after the war, a very important figure in germany. she told me, my efforts. the records the she submitted were found in the west german investigative. see what she had sent in and out there were reacting to it. yet your hand up. >> i mean, ugly when referencing to the soviet pows. locked in these camps. there were basically either shot or the nazis just abandon them.

they had no rations. there route -- there resorted to cannibalism. no, it's more about of the stock . >> in germany, the interpretation. to come to grips with did you have to deal with that. the previous explanations.

>> i think you're getting it. this broader complicity. [inaudible question] >> the west germans in particular over the years have developed what has become a model history of restitution issues, no normalization activity, secondary education. so, you know, what has happened in germany since the war is quite remarkable and impressive

proposed genocidal society. but you have got the reality of individuals to participate in these crimes. and this is pretty specific to west germany and austria. austria is even worse. so this is about wanting to return to normality and understanding women behavior. but in the history behind them and moving forward. indicative of not only looking for, but letting people go with murder. so the legal reforms that the institute, they let people re-enter the civil service. they let the boss who was indicted eventually for killing 11,000 jews, it will to go back into the police force after the

war. these people could continue their careers in these professions that were already clearly involved in the holocaust. so there is that kind of story. the system did not really -- was not aggressive enough and did not interpret the law, they could have interpreted the law differently. yet, they suddenly became the interpretation. convicted recently a new understanding of the law. they decided at this late stage that because he was a guard in the primary purpose was to kill, it was a murder operation, that one is by association guilty because you're working in the killing operation. that is the task. so they suddenly decide, this is a broader interpretation of that. that could have been the case earlier on, and it was not generational issues in terms of

confrontation. i think young germans a lot of fatigue. they feel like they've had too much interest cool. ironically they don't get enough of it in college. i think the university level is really the time when you approach the subject seriously. so there is an effort now to try to get holocaust studies and professorships and get it into the curriculum at the university level because people need to be trained to run and the experts in this history. so there are some pieces within the system that are not perfect. we are still working on that. it is difficult to this day. there are still some taboos in terms of talking about this history. it is understandable. not insurmountable.

[inaudible question] thinks. [inaudible question] pritchett during the war. there really pointed the finger at the east germans for arrest in the mother and keeping her in jail.